2012 Evo X Carputer Build

I build computers often. I love my car. Put the two together, and you get carpoooooter!

First off, here is the love of my life 2012 Wicked White Evo X. Full bolt-ons, 35% all around tint (except windshield), blacked out headlights, smoked taillights.

Right now, I'm running an AppRadio 2 powered by a Galaxy S3 running ARLiberator (full HDMI mirroring with touchscreen input). It works decently.. some bugs here or there (HDMI output stops working after turning off and on the car/headunit, need to restart the phone). Meh sound quality. Got it for a good deal so whatever.

ANYWHOOO.. a few days ago, I decided to make the carputer plunge. Some specs:

I have everything ordered except the DVD drive, mediacard/USB hub, and external sound card. My goal is to install everything between this Thursday and Friday as I will be making a 250 mile drive to NY for the holidays on Saturday

Regarding my GPS choice: I looked into the wildly popular Globalsat BU-353-S4, but the 1Hz update rate kills it for me. Therefore, I decided to go the OEM route and pick up a bare Locosys LS20031 module. This module is capable of 66 channels, AGPS, up to 10Hz refresh rate (apparently 5Hz works best though), SBAS (WAAS, EGNOS, MSAS), built in battery to preserve satellite acquisition data, and an LED indicator for GPS Fix status.

This is a bare module that has contact pins on the bottom for serial communication. I'm planning to have a housing printed with a 3D printer and solder a USB-TTL cable to the contact pins to connect it to the computer.

Welcome to ther forum! Your ride looks awesome and you seem to have a good list of items. Good luck on getting everything up and running for your trip. For a quick and easy frontend you might give Drivelne a try. SNO

Hooked up the LS20031 GPS module to a Sparkfun FTDI Basic serial to USB adapter and got a very sexy NMEA 5Hz stream. Sensitivity seems to be pretty good.. I live on the second floor of a six story apartment building and it had no problem pulling a signal indoors.

Took me about 2 hours to figure out how to enable 800x480. Ended up having to use DTDCalculator to write a custom timing profile. If anyone is interested, I used the following modeline: Modeline "800x480" 31.746 800 860 940 1000 480 508 511 525 -hsync -vsync

Tomorrow, I will install everything into the car and hopefully nothing goes wrong

What's the best performance upgrade you've done? I've been thinking about an intercooler for my supercharged GTP for a long time..

Single most useful upgrade: good tune

It's hard to say what would be the best upgrade for your specific car.. different designs respond differently to new parts. For example, on the Evo 8/9, changing the lower intercooler pipe made a huge difference whereas the upper intercooler pipe didn't do anything. The opposite is true for the X.

That said, you can intercool your GTP, but that might take some custom fabrication Don't superchargers sit directly ontop of the motor without any plumbing?